Watch the new Zelda have lock-picking just to spite me

This was going to be a joke about how the Gerudo skill trial thing doesn’t have enough keys but I spent all day playing The Last Guardian and ran out of time.

I assume to a Gerudo, finding out someone can’t pick locks is like taking a computer science course and they spend the first day bringing everyone in the room who doesn’t know how to save a file up to speed.

How about making the keys with a durability of 0.01 so that Link thinks that he needs a way to raise their durability while it’d be impossible? Or make the keys out of cold butter. They’d melt too much to be useful at the door, especially in the fire dungeon where the key to the ice dungeon would be put.

Actually, in the first game, on the NES, you could – it’s how I beat the second dungeon…pretty much every time – there are enough keys, but it’s possibly to unlock the doors in the wrong order, and not be able to complete the dungeon as is…so I’d always go pick up a key from the 3rd dungeon, toodle back over to the 2nd, finish it, and then walk the last key from the 2nd back to the 3rd to finish that one. Don’t know why I always screw it up, but I do.

You make lovely comics~ I love the look and the story that goes with it. I really like how Commander is such a strong fella but he is so kind and relatable with his interactions of those around him. It is nice to see a main character who is down to earth. Thanks for the wonderful read and story~

Yup. It’s because the last dungeon are more closed doors than keys. So, either you take the right path and get the Magic Key, either you end up completly lost and decide to buy lots of keys.

Point being : if Ganondorf is the Lord of Evil or something, why not murder the guy who sell keys and steal his stock? Wich bring us to the next question : is he really the bad guy or just a regular guy who try to build labyrinths for the children of his people?

If I was Ganondorf, I’d take all the dungeon treasures in Hyrule and hide them in the last room of my castle. And then each chest would be guarded by, like, ten darknuts or something.
I know, some of Link’s inventory is gotten in the overworld, or from one of his allies, but if I could keep the bombs or the bow+arrows out of his hands, he’d be screwed.

Yeah, but then Link will just break the pottery that they store the rupees and steal them, right after smashing their pumpkin patch.

So, if they don’t smash actual hookshot targets, and just make fakes, similar to when Indians began breeding snakes in response to a British bounty on snake heads, they can come out ahead. Also, by not smashing ones in the dungeons, Link will spend his time there, and not in towns destroying vital pottery and crops in search of rupees.

Nah, here’s what you really do. Find the chest containing the ancient treasure of the temple, then take that treasure, then replace it with something that seems important and unique, like a box that blows warm air in the fire level. Link will never ever come out again, because he’ll try to figure out how this new item solves all the dungeon puzzles.

Breath of the Wild is designed in a way that it can be completed in whatever order you want with few exceptions. You can go straight to the final boss with nothing but a tree branch for a weapon from the beginning of the game. Heck, all indications point to the story progression being independent of game progression. It looks like it’s going to have more in common with the original and The Elder Scrolls than it does with any other game in the series.

I dunno, I think there’s a difference between fans saying “we are hoping the game will be this way” and the game’s producers saying “You can lits just beat the boss, we don’t care if you follow the story or not”. And the dev team for Skyward Sword flat out said they wanted the game to be less big in scope compared to Twilight Princess, which had a big open map but nothing to do in lots of it. When over half of the hidden treasures in the game are rupees in hidden rooms, it’s time to reel it in.

Besides, the game was playable at E3 and the most linearity anyone was able to find ended about 3 minutes in.

The story is going to be completely optional according to Aonuma, but also supposed to be pretty detailed if you take the time to do it. The combat seems very Dark Souls, as far as strafing and memorizing enemy patterns are concerned.

These little scenes with the Commander and Ganondorf hanging out and being friends are my favorite scenes in the comic. I love how they seem to really like and respect each other, enough so that they’ll just chill and have coffee together occasionally. It’s very sweet.

“Gandondorf assuming his unique upbringing isn’t all that unique” jokes are so great. Your version of his character is so well adjusted, it just doesn’t occur to him most people don’t grow up surrounded by thief warrior women.

I really love how you portray Ganon and humanize the character as just a guy trying to get by. Instead of just the generic great evil that many make him out to be. It makes it so I always look forward to reading it the moment I see him in it.

actually, if you are talking about the Nintendo 64 version of the gerudo trials… you are sort of right. you are technically meant to just grab every key and go in from one door, not go for the nearest locked door. I found this out the hard way. it’s basically a puzzle within a puzzle challenge. you have to find keys to get the prize you desire, however, they give you just one less key than you need to open every locked door.

there fore the solution is whether you let greed for exploration and money win, or greed for greater power. one leads you to small chests with about 10 rupees each, the other leads you to the ice arrows, and about 20 less rupees or so.

it’s truly a puzzle about priorities. it sort of goes against the rest of the game, yes the rest of the game guides you upon what path you need to take, but not so heavy handedly that you don’t think you are exploring. this in turn makes you feel throughout the game that exploration is a key to success, however, in the gerudo dungeon, they have a style of life that says, you don’t need to see everything, you just need to go for the true goal. anything else may find you in defeat.

so to parse it out,
the majority of the game is, exploration is good, fun, worthwhile.
the gerudo dungeon is, exploration can keep you from the end goal.

personally I enjoyed it, despite how I could not have a second chance. it’s a metapuzzle. just like some dungeons are metapuzzles.
:)

Huh, I remember unlocking qll the locks in that mini dungeon….
Probably one of my favorite sidequests in zelda games ever, I remember I can’t find one missing key and I was blown away when I found it using the lens of truth. Ah the memories..

Yeah, like Adeon says, there are enough keys to open all the doors. I recently helped my nephews find the last few keys, after they had already opened a bunch of doors at random, and that last key was a bitch to find, took several hours of backtracking and careful study….

wait… there actually are enough keys? I feel almost disappointed now.
I know about the one with the lens of truth. I swear I hit every room in the place and always came out like one key short if I didn’t aim for the ice arrows from the start. and even then I couldn’t open the locked doors to like… two tiny chests. which in the grand scheme felt mildly unimportant.

plus it made the dungeon feel like a reflection of gerudo life. you go for the goal or risk dying in the desert because you were side questing all the time…..

now I feel the need to whack every wall and bring nothing but green potions so I can scan every room with the lens of truth in case their were two hidden walls.

since when was stealth ever a priority? well… I take that back. there was that time to get the zora eggs in majoras mask. and the other time in ocarina of time to meet the princess. and the time in skyward sword from the moblins in eldin province. I can’t think of any more off hand though. technically in twilight princess the only possible stealth part I can think of is just after getting back to ordon and going after the sword and shield, and you didn’t really have to sneak PAST anyone, just not get beaten by the swordsman, or too close to be seen instead of hearing the message between the mayor.

yeah. not a whole lot of stealth. oh wait, forgot the second in ocarina of time. the gerudo fortress. and the second one in majoras mask, the deku palace gardens. but otherwise yeah. he’s a kill all end all warrior with no stealth. just a really big megaton hammer.

There was also those horrible sequences in Skyward Sword involving tears of light and being unable to fight things. You know, the ones with the Guardians and those floating things and the water that alerts all of them if you touch it.

Not to mention the Temple of the Ocean God in Phantom Hourglass. Luckily, near the end-game, you can go loud and kill everything.

Getting to see the Zelda in Ocarina, yeah. I always just wanted to murder the guards. They didn’t help any when Ganondorf took over anyway…

If you think they did, do you really think Impa couldn’t have gotten Zelda away without the help of any guards? The guards probably were the reason that Ganondorf knew where Impa and Zelda went. Probably broke under interrogation immediately. Silently murdering them would have been a mercy (think of the torture that Ganondorf probably put them through) and done more to protect Zelda.

I didn’t mind my class so much since the teacher would hand out sheets detailing what we needed to do before he started explaining the steps. Let those of us who knew how to operate a computer the ability to get done in minutes while those who needed help got it.

Did kinda hurt my brain a bit to learn that one of the people who were seriously asking questions about practically everything basic was aiming for a degree in web-design though.

ITT Tech’s commercials tell you all about how a degree in something tech-related gives you money and job security, and so there was a massive increase in Comp Sci students across the board.

I have many friends in IT who frequently bemoan how many of their co workers simply don’t care. They don’t -know- anything about the systems they maintain. They have certifications, sure, but they don’t bother retaining any of the information. They just go off existing flow charts and diagrams and basically do the minimum possible effort. Simply put, they’re not nerds.

I was doing a Bio 101 at a Texas community college. first lesson was on how to use a basic light microscope – that isn’t the troubling part. First set of question was about the possible magnifications (eye piece magnification * lens magnification), which many people found difficult – but that’s not the troubling part. The troubling part was – the eye piece magnification is 10.

As someone who has taken a computer class recently and spent the first week on the whole “this is how you save” “this is how you select multiple files at once” “this is how you take screenshots” type bullshit, oh my gooooooood, WHY. Makes it impossible to take the course seriously. Its like starting the first session of a college algebra class practicing simple multiplication/division.

Because, believe it or not, basic computer competency is not a prerequisite for COM101. The course is written with the assumption that the student has never touched a computer before. And it has to be. I had to take it, since my degree is in software development. But so does EVERY degree now. The main concern is people who went to schools where computers weren’t mandatory or who lived in areas where computers aren’t even common.

Yeah, if I ever end up taking a computer course (and I’ll probably need to someday) I’ll definitely need to be walked through those kinds of things since computers weren’t used much when I was in school.

It’s understandable when you have a class with enough people that the teacher can’t be sure of everyone’s computer competency, but it turns into a bit of a joke when it’s say, a class of 15 9th graders that the teacher is absolutely aware have all been using computers in that school since first grade, but decides to stick to the lesson plan with rigid adherence.

Kinda sets the precedent that this is going to be “goof around on the internet and do whatever you want for an hour” class.

That expression on Gannon’s face, the way he’s holding his teacup down so as not to spill it… Priceless.

Of course, if Gannon did start destroying/hiding the keys, Link would just, you know, actually learn to pick locks; but at least it would be a 110% effort on Gannon’s part to be Dangerously Genre Savvy.

…..

Actually, now I’m thinking of some kind of Legend of Zelda set in a steampunk/magipunk time, like DisHonored. Gannon is some brown, short-pointy-eared kid from the dirtiest, fishmongeriest streets who’s been getting the shit kicked out of him by guys with whitier, pointier ears, who grows up big and strong and vows that he ain’t never gonna take that shit again, and sets out to show the whole of Hyrule that Gerudo boys ain’t second-class citizens.

Of course, when you set out to do that, you kind of have to break some heads along the way, ’cause ain’t nobody gonna respect some Gerudo guy unless he makes ’em. So by the time that Gannon’s an adult, he may be wearing fancy business suits and big enough and wealthy enough to command respect in parliament with his booming voice, but don’t ever think that means he hasn’t got a kukri in the small of his back and a pair of brass knuckles still in his pocket.

Link, meanwhile, is some bumfuck farm kid who grew up chasing the roaring steam trains on his pony Epona, as far as the railings of the farm would let him, tilting at windmills like Don Quixote and thrashing rodents of unusual size with a big old stick. His family breaks well in the milk industry or whatever, and move to the big city, which breaks his heart because he can’t bring Epona, but he sees Princess Zelda and goes gooey-hearted at first sight, resolving to learn everything he can about her. This leads to him getting his hands on a book of old legends, learning about how there’s always a Link, always a Zelda, and always a Gannon. So then he realizes that there’s now a Gannon living across from him… And things go sideways fast when he does something really, really stupid, gets in mega trouble with the law, and his family get taken to the cleaners in court, resulting in him winding up on the dirty streets that Gannon himself came from.

To think we’d never have the Zelda series if Gannon had a key ring. I imagine this Gannon takes 1 key to drive to work, but hides the key to get into his house and just switches them out when he needs too. At one point this Gannon thought “No… The flower pot would be too obvious…”

What I would do to prevent lock picking is electrify the lock. So the minute anyone puts any tools in there to try to pick the lock, they get a nasty surprise. This may or may not work depending on what res stats and gear is equipped though. But it might serve as early warning system if nothing else.

Hey, just a heads up. I keep getting popups for an “Urgent Chrome Update” when I log onto your site. Might wanna look into that. I’m using Ghostery but I keep it turned off on your site so you can get ad revenue from me.

If you’re in a computer science course and the first day they spend time on making sure everyone is up to speed on How to Save a File, you could just follow along and find something else to do on the side, like reading up on what you wanted to learn, via the Internet, or if you wanted, you could just bring along some knitting. You could, also, fuss and fume that they’re covering something so abysmally rudimentary, but that’s up to the individual.